Bitcoin News – Virtual Mining Bitcoin Newshttp://virtualmining.com
News & Events for the Bitcoin CurrencyTue, 06 Feb 2018 05:25:14 +0000en-UShourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=4.9.3ANX International Offers Front-To-Back Solutions That Can Make Working With Bitcoin Easierhttp://virtualmining.com/anx-international-offers-front-to-back-solutions-that-can-make-working-with-bitcoin-easier/
Mon, 23 Nov 2015 11:30:15 +0000http://virtualmining.com/anx-international-offers-front-to-back-solutions-that-can-make-working-with-bitcoin-easier/Read more »]]>On November 18, the first public information appeared about bitcoin exchange solution provider ANX International offering a full suite of blockchain solutions to make the use of bitcoin and blockchain easier. These solutions could promote bitcoin among companies within the traditional financial sector as they work in a similar way. Besides, companies are able to combine ANX’s solutions in a way that fits their business needs.

What is most interesting about ANX’s suite of services is that it is completely modular. That means each company is able to choose only those services they really need without having to pay for all of them. It’s actually convenient as each company is able to adjust the suite to its own budget. Companies can choose between separate services or combine them into modules however they like. This could really come in handy.

“There is a growing demand for Blockchain solutions from all types of firms from listed companies requiring their own blockchain-based loyalty programs, to companies wanting to manage their own digital assets exchange, without the burden of hiring a large team to maintain their operations.”

ANX provides solutions that make working with Blockchain similar to working with traditional financial assets. This could actually attract some traditional market players to embrace this innovative technology as its use becomes familiar to them. However, some experts weren’t too enthusiastic about ANX’s new suite of solutions. Larry Pantlin, the owner of Capstone Digital Mining, told CoinTelegraph:

“That is an interesting platform, it should do well. But I am already involved with an exchanger and I will not look to really change.”

ANX International is known for various innovations in the FinTech space. The company was first to offer a debit card for digital assets and a Vault mobile application for digital currencies. They also were the first to offer a multi-currency online digital assets exchange platforms, ANXBTC and ANXPro. That’s why ANX International was awarded the “Hong Kong’s Most Valuable Companies Award” earlier in the year.

CoinTelegraph tried to reach out to the management of ANX International, but didn’t receive any comments at the time of publication.

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This week various events including the political proposal in Southeast Asia, a new service for US customers, the expansion of the largest global banks consortium to research distributed ledger technology and the rise of new platforms to make “Bitcoin Only” purchases have also had a great influence on the Bitcoin price. And here are some of them.

Singapore Prime Minister Said National Banks Can Use Blockchain

At the United Overseas Bank (UOB) 80th anniversary dinner, Lee Hsien Loong, Prime Minister of Singapore, commented that Bitcoin and blockchain technology are going to change the banking industry. This statement from Loong suggests a bright future for the decentralized technology within the country.

Long’s ten minute speech was concluded with words of support towards blockchain applications within the banking industry:

“The operation environment has become more challenging, and on top of that, technology is moving very fast, with new business models disrupting traditional banking. For example, more and more people are making payments through their smartphones, they can pay for taxes, buy movie tickets, shop online, transfer money, pay for goods at restaurants and shops, all on their smartphones. […] And that’s just on the consumer side of the financial services. There are other technologies, like blockchain, which is used for Bitcoin but can also be used for many other applications. […] And our banks must keep up to date with these developments.”

BitHappy and OpenBazaar: “Bitcoin Only” Stores Are At The Doors

BitHappy and OpenBazaar are positioned to lead the bitcoin goods trading software race, as both platforms prepare for a December launch.

Both BitHappy and OpenBazaar look to deploy immediate options to create functional, complete, “Bitcoin only” stores. Marco E. G. Maltese, author and journalist at CoinTelegraph, decided to compare both of the competitors and asked Brian Hoffman, lead developer of OpenBazaar, to give his point of view on both projects.

According to a report from Reuters on November 19th, BNP Paribas, Wells Fargo, ING, MacQuarie and the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce have joined the R3 consortium researching ways blockchain technology can be used in the traditional financial industry.

Coinbase Partners With Shift to Launch New Bitcoin Debit Card

On November 20th, one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges, Coinbase, announced the launch of Shift Card – a bitcoin debit card which seeks to provide an everyday solution for those looking to spend their bitcoins.

By combining the universal recognition of Visa with the security of Coinbase’s wallet, users will now be able to spend bitcoins stored in their Coinbase accounts anywhere that Visa is accepted. The Shift Card will allow users to spend their bitcoins as if it were a regular debit card.

ANX International Offers Front-To-Back Solutions That Can Make Working With Bitcoin Easier

On November 18th, the first public information appeared about bitcoin exchange solution provider ANX International offering a full suite of blockchain solutions to make the use of bitcoin and blockchain easier. These solutions could promote bitcoin among companies within the traditional financial sector as they work in a similar way.

ANX’s suite of services bonus is that it is completely modular, which allows any company to choose only those services they really need without having to pay for all of them. It’s actually convenient as each company is able to adjust the suite to its own budget.

“There is a growing demand for Blockchain solutions from all types of firms from listed companies requiring their own blockchain-based loyalty programs, to companies wanting to manage their own digital assets exchange, without the burden of hiring a large team to maintain their operations.”

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]]>Delta ID Coin: New Utility-Altcoin Developed For Timestamping Systemhttp://virtualmining.com/delta-id-coin-new-utility-altcoin-developed-for-timestamping-system/
Mon, 23 Nov 2015 11:30:14 +0000http://virtualmining.com/delta-id-coin-new-utility-altcoin-developed-for-timestamping-system/Read more »]]>Delta Business Management, a London based investment company, is developing its own blockchain for timestamping, named Delta ID Coin. Douglas Millard, from Delta Business Management, told CoinTelegraph in a personal conversation on November 21st, that the addition will allow the company to register its users issuing a coin on the Bitcoin blockchain.

Timestamping On The Blockchain

Timestamping on the blockchain is not new in the cryptocurrency world, but for the ones that are entering this ecosystem late, a little explanation is due: the blockchain, the backbone of most cryptocurrency, is essentially a public ledger where transactions are written.

But apart from the actual Bitcoin (or altcoin) transactions, the ledger also allows a certain amount of extra data to be recorded into each block. This creates the conditions to store proof that something happened at that exact time. Would it be a land property transfer, the publication of a book, the fact that you have given a present to your girlfriend or even just a bet between friends. Anything you can think of, essentially, can be stamped with a time precision of less than half an hour on the blockchain.

This registration method has two advantages: first it’s economic, because with a simple, inexpensive Bitcoin transaction anything can be stored, second nobody can tamper with the registered data, ever, thanks to blockchain technology being distributed and unmodifiable.

However, the amount of data that can be added to any Bitcoin transaction is limited, so to get around the issue other solutions, often described as “sidechains”, are used to alleviate Bitcoin blockchain bloat.

Not Another ALT Coin

From the little information available, it seems that Delta ID Coin will represent Delta Business’ clients and allow them to have a proof by storing their coins (a single one) in a personal Bitcoin address.

One of the first applications of Delta ID Coin will be the registration of car parking spaces at Gatwick Airport, making this a solution to a real world use case.

Douglas Millard, from Delta Coin Business, explains that:

“Delta ID coin is a token that Delta Business Management is considering creating using Omnilayer which sits on top of the Bitcoin blockchain similarly to Counterparty.

The Bitcoin blockchain will be used for time stamping we are not an altcoin competitor. The plan is to use Bitcoin addresses as markers which store Delta ID Coin, no personal information will be contained within the ID token which will be issued to customers. Clients will first have to provide KYC information to DBM before ID coins will be sent to a Bitcoin address of their choice, they will then be able to receive any returns generated from asset investments.”

Omnilayer has been already adopted by several projects in different countries and is a reliable, consolidated platform.

At the time of writing, Delta Business has yet to announce an official release date.

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]]>New Profit Potential from CCEDK’s New Currency Obitshttp://virtualmining.com/new-profit-potential-from-ccedks-new-currency-obits/
Mon, 23 Nov 2015 11:30:14 +0000http://virtualmining.com/new-profit-potential-from-ccedks-new-currency-obits/Read more »]]>Danish cryptocurrency exchange CCEDK released a new currency called Obits that offers holders a share garnered from trading and referrals on the OpenLedger platform. The public launch is due on December 1st while the private sale of Obits begun last Friday with half the coins available for pre-sale being already sold.

Ronny Boesing, Founder and CEO at CCEDK, told to the CoinTelegraph:

“We have a total supply of 18 276 898 tokens called OBITS, 20% was released prior to Friday last week with a public launch on December 1st, 2015, about 10% has been sold.”

Investors can buy the new currency Obit using both Bitcoin and fiat and during the private sale stage the price is lower than current market price, and much lower than the public price will be. It is similar to buying stakes in the exchange business where currency holders can earn from current and future revenue streams.

Obits has been created as a token on the decentralized financial platform OpenLedger, which is also run by CCEDK. De facto OpenLedger is a BitShares 2.0 financial smart contract and cryptocurrency platform and is especially suitable for fast trading while users have control over their balances. Obits holders will also have a say in the future development of OpenLedger via exclusive voting features from CCEDK.

According to Ronny Boesing:

[Obits brings] the potential win in being the initial lifetime member referring new customers to the OpenLedger platform, allowing residual income onwards on whatever they may spend on the platform.”

By December 1st, 70% of the total supply of Obits will be available. Therefore, if the whole 70% will be sold in December 2015, the first month of buyback will start on January 2nd, otherwise the first month of buyback will take place February 1st.

You can find out more on the Obits official website obits.io.

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]]>ECOM21 2015: Baltic States To Explore Bitcoin and Blockchain Technology Inside E-commercehttp://virtualmining.com/ecom21-2015-baltic-states-to-explore-bitcoin-and-blockchain-technology-inside-e-commerce/
Mon, 23 Nov 2015 11:30:14 +0000http://virtualmining.com/ecom21-2015-baltic-states-to-explore-bitcoin-and-blockchain-technology-inside-e-commerce/Read more »]]>This year’s the biggest e-commerce forum ECOM21 2015 in Latvia has allocated great attention to Bitcoin and Blockchain development in the Baltic states. The conference gathered 500 attendees and 39 speakers from 32 countries.

“There was a big portion of the conference that was dedicated to Bitcoin which was fantastic to see and quite odd to me to experience in an e-commerce conference.

I’ve learned some interesting aspects of the Blockchain technology and Bitcoin that I wasn’t aware of before ECOM21.”

ECOM21 2015 ended on the 20th of November in Riga, Latvia. This is the 4th edition of the conference, organized by the Business Conference Group. Themes included traditional e-commerce forms of payments, e-wallets, P2P lending, stores in social networks, regulation and development of alternative banking, how mobile payment systems are affecting the industry and of course Bitcoin and Blockchain technology.

Saneback continued:

“I was thinking of investing in Bitcoin a couple of years ago when the trend was hot, but ended up not doing it due to instability at that point in time.”

Addressing the seven points in the development of e-commerce, Saneback added:

“There is no e-commerce, m-commerce, social commerce, in-store commerce, etc.: for consumers it’s all just commerce.

Consumers care not only about money, but also time and energy.

Mobile revolution has started but many online companies are still not mobile-friendly.

Mobile devices stand for over half of traffic to European e-commerce sites.

Mobile web is growing 8x faster than desktop web did in the 1990s.

3x more smartphones activated every minute than there are babies being born.

Be where your customer is.”

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]]>BTCC Lowers Confirmation Times With BlockPriorityhttp://virtualmining.com/btcc-lowers-confirmation-times-with-blockpriority/
Sat, 21 Nov 2015 12:15:37 +0000http://virtualmining.com/btcc-lowers-confirmation-times-with-blockpriority/Read more »]]>Bticoin exchange BTCC has added a new service to its platform that prioritizes bitcoin transaction confirmations. From now on, users will experience lower confirmation times.

BTCChina, the oldest, and one of the largest Bitcoin exchanges in the country, has developed BlockPriority; a new service that allows its users (even those that pay zero transaction fees) prioritized confirmations in transactions to and from BTCC wallets.

BlockPriority is also designed to grant fast confirmations when the Bitcoin network is under stress or during spam attacks. The service comes free of charge for all BTCC users and is already live within their system.

BTCC’s Chief Technology Officer, Mikael Wang, states:

“BlockPriority is the latest addition to our proprietary blockchain technology services. It demonstrates our commitment to providing our customers and the wider Bitcoin community with the best and most convenient experience possible.”

BlockPriority works by sending transactions to and from all BTCC wallets directly to the BTCC mining pool, which is one of the largest in the world – amounting for about 13% of the total hashing power.

Too Good To Be True?

We asked Pavel Kravchenko, Chief Cryptographer at Tembusu Systems, what BlockPriority’s advantages are, and if this technology can really make a difference. He commented:

“First, the average block size is still 0.5MB, second, the BTCC mining pool makes only 13% of hashing power. I think that the probability that a transaction will be processed faster is really small. In fact this feature is just a substitution for higher transaction fees that people pay to make their transactions being processed faster.”

According to Kravchenko, the best case scenario is one where the increase in transaction speed is probably just 13%, which corresponds to the hashing power of the BTCC pool. Thirteen percent? Is it possible that BTCC’s new BlockPriority service is merely a gimmick for PR? We contacted BTCC for more details on BlockPriority. As of the time of publication we have yet to hear back.

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]]>IndieSquare Wallet vs Others: Is it a Step Forward?http://virtualmining.com/indiesquare-wallet-vs-others-is-it-a-step-forward/
Sat, 21 Nov 2015 12:15:36 +0000http://virtualmining.com/indiesquare-wallet-vs-others-is-it-a-step-forward/Read more »]]>Decentralized exchanges have paralleled projects such as Colored Coins that allow for individual claims of ownership via the blockchain. But they’ve always edged more towards crypto enthusiasts or experts in terms of access because they only exist on 2.0 platforms such as Counterparty, NXT, and Bitshares. But Koji Higashi and his team at IndieSquare have produced a wallet capable of a native solution for these issues.

The Indie Approach

Taking the initiative to combine the native features of a mobile crypto wallet and the Counterparty system is an accomplishment in itself, but IndieSquare has managed to go one step further by natively supporting Shapeshift.io features within the wallet app, or as Koji himself put it:

“For a lot of users getting XCP is a big hurdle. That’s one of the reasons we added support for ShapeShift so beginners can start experiencing Counterparty and the decentralized exchange more casually. Now we have integrated ShapeShift in our wallet, if you have some btc, you can purchase XCP, a native Counterparty token, easily and can issue your original token or start trading for other Counterparty tokens through XCP all within IndieSquare Wallet. So yes in a way, you can consider our wallet a bitcoin wallet with Counterparty features.”

When asked why his team chose Counterparty over any other 2.0 platform, Koji gave this response:

“I see. A very good question. So the big part about choosing Counterparty over say… Colored Coins, for example, is Counterparty already has a functional decentralized exchange where you can trade your own tokens with other people in a decentralized way. When we started working on the project, we have looked into BiShares, NXT, and others too as they have their own decentralized exchanges. Some of the drawbacks we saw were of course they are using their own blockchains and the stability of the chain was where we had some concerns about.”

Bitcoin or Broke

While this enhanced functionality is certainly good promotion for Counterparty and mobile wallet devs, is it possible that the addition of shapeshift.io could open up vulnerabilities to the wallet app, thus hindering the extra security gained from the Bitcoin Blockchain? To get an expert view we contacted Ethereum Co-Founder and Founder of Kryptokit, Anthony Di Iorio for his input on the matter:

“It shouldn’t offer potential for breach of security if done properly. I’m not a fan of exchanges due to the complexities typically associated with setting up accounts and dealing with bid and ask orders. Alternatively, products such as ShapeShift that remove friction and simplify processes are beneficial to the cryptocurrency community and will appeal to new users.”

Shifting back to IndieSquare, Koji says they plan on releasing an update next week featuring an enhanced GUI to improve user friendliness and enhance the stability of the IndieSquare wallet app.

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]]>Coinbase Partners With Shift To Launch New Bitcoin Debit Cardhttp://virtualmining.com/coinbase-partners-with-shift-to-launch-new-bitcoin-debit-card/
Fri, 20 Nov 2015 21:30:32 +0000http://virtualmining.com/coinbase-partners-with-shift-to-launch-new-bitcoin-debit-card/Read more »]]>On November 20th Coinbase announced the launch of the Shift Card; a bitcoin debit card which seeks to provide an everyday solution for those looking to spend their bitcoin.

Shifting Gears

By combining the universal recognition of Visa with the security of Coinbase’s wallet, users will now be able to spend the bitcoins stored in their Coinbase accounts anywhere that Visa is accepted. The Shift Card will allow users to spend their bitcoin as though it were a regular debit card, which has raised some concerns from Rik Willard, Founder and Managing Director at Agentic Group. Willard commented:

“I don’t know the inner workings of the Shift Card, but it would make sense that Coinbase may be converting BTC to fiat on the fly with some sort of internal reserve that can cover an estimated number of purchases based on card issuances and limits, but that’s not the important thing. What is likely important is that it may it defeat the purpose for many Bitcoin purists who want to use actual BTC as a currency to pay for goods. So the question is ‘who is their market?’”

While metered in his skepticism towards the card’s adoption by more traditional users, Willard continued:

“I’m not sure that Bitcoin pioneers will be running to get the Shift Card but I can see that – if positioned correctly – it may let new consumers feel safe about trying something new. But there’s a big red flag in the way — with a $10 activation fee that must be paid in bitcoin, they are either forcing newbies to get bitcoin in order to play, or asking veterans to join in the party for a couple of satoshi. That’s a schizophrenic strategy that smells a bit like desperation. I would like to see it succeed, but have my doubts. Time — and marketing muscle — will tell.”

Willard is not alone. Ward Stirrat, Co-founder of CoinPayments, chimed a similar tune when asked what he thought of the announcement:

“This is becoming a more common product out in the marketplace with several companies having launched these already.”

When asked whether or not he found the announcement noteworthy or if it was merely gathering attention because the one making the announcement is a major market player, he replied:

“More the latter. E-coin has been doing this for the past year…Still, great that they are enabling mainstream spending of BTC as it moves the whole crypto space ahead. Applaud the launch.”

Vladmir Dubinin, CEO of Distributed Lab, gave a different insight:

“Certainly it is a step forward. more options and interesting live experiment for all community, everybody can use debit card natively connected to BTC-deposit. The most interesting thing for me now is the speed of adoption of this service…’m happy that market has this option. This proposition from the biggest player is valuable and well-timed. It is very interesting to know how many users will order this card in next 3 months.”

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]]>Monetary policy of Canada: Prospects and Dangers of Digital Currencyhttp://virtualmining.com/monetary-policy-of-canada-prospects-and-dangers-of-digital-currency/
Fri, 20 Nov 2015 17:45:16 +0000http://virtualmining.com/monetary-policy-of-canada-prospects-and-dangers-of-digital-currency/Read more »]]>Carolyn Wilkins, senior deputy governor of the Bank of Canada recently warned banks about the effect that cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin can bring to the monetary policy. According to the speech “Innovation, Central-Bank Style” Canada’s banks should manage the risks and benefits that could arise from the broader adoption of e-money.

According to Carolyn Wilkins:

“As we think about alternative futures, we have to envision a world in which people mostly use e-money, perhaps even one that’s not denominated in a national currency, such as Bitcoin. This would create a new dynamic in the global monetary order, one in which central banks would struggle to implement monetary policy. And, central banks couldn’t act as lenders of last resort as they do for their own currencies.”

The senior deputy governor of the Bank of Canada stated that according to the corporate plan the bank will explore modern financial and technology trends over the course of three years. The bank will focus on studies of modern economic statistics and behavioural economics.

We have reached out to a number of experts in Canada to learn what they think about emerging financial policy, Blockchain technology rise and latest Carolyn Wilkins speech.

“Carolyn Wilkins’ remarks about the value of an innovation-friendly culture are very encouraging, and it is great that the Bank of Canada is adopting a positive attitude to innovations such as the blockchain. We are also sensitive to her worries about the blockchain’s disruptive potential – how effective monetary policy can be conducted, and whether it will remain possible to for the BoC to act as ‘lender of last’ resort.”

Reasons of concern

FinTech and Blockchain technology saw a tremendous growth throughout the recent years. Carolyn Wilkins has pointed out once again that banks are worried of having difficulties to implement monetary policy while emerging technologies gain traction and popularity.

“My personal opinion is Bitcoin and crypto infrastructure will replace the need for current policies, with more people switching to e-money, price volatility will be resolved,” said Alexander Alexandrov, CEO and Founder at CoinPayments to CoinTelegraph.

He continued:

“By design Bitcoin will overall increase in value so worrying about losses is only an issue during the adoption cycle. This just speaks of their lack of full understanding of what is really happening and them trying to save their failing business model. Similar to using blockchain and avoiding bitcoin as suggested by other firms. Overall this is a shift in the right direction but a clear indication of lack of understanding on what transparent and decentralized systems want.”

Manie Eagar, Co-founder and Chairman of the Digital Finance Institute Director and founder of GriffenVentures commented:

“The key concern that Wilkins raises, and justifiably so, is: Innovation may be difficult, however, if cryptocurrencies gain real traction and usurp national currencies, is because “this would create a new dynamic in the global monetary order, one in which central banks would struggle to implement monetary policy.” Seen that alternative currencies or digital currencies will make the world of value exchange more frictionless, it is time to revisit disparate regulation and standards for the internet, money, exchange, global settlement practices, security, etc.”

Manie Eagar believes that Carolyn Wilkins concern focuses on the risk of a free floating alternative currency and its potential for radical fluctuation in value with the potential losses that merchants and consumers alike might incur:

“The industry has already proved quite innovative in this regard as many exchanges and payment processors already provide instant settlement or underwrite a ‘lock-in’ of the value of a trade and the ruling price at the instant of transaction. This seems quite sustainable and practical in the real world to support merchant and consumer adoption.”

Banks trying to jump on the train

World banks have expressed their concerns about the impact of booming FinTech solutions for years. While they do feel being a bit behind on the latest advances some major world banks joined R3 consortiums to explore Blockchain technology and how to apply it in traditional financial system.

According to Alexander Alexandrov:

“They were ignoring [Bitcoin Blockchain technology], fighting it, laughing at it now they are trying to join. Mainly they have a real issue working in an economy where they don’t get to issue “fake” money and have to really manage what goes in and out. They are now researching ways to adapt and, in my opinion, the best thing they can do is invest in the startups instead of asking their current guys to figure it out. This all seems to me like an indicator they are no longer laughing at us.”

Moreover, some banks have already tried to make their own digital currencies. The Royal Canadian Mint has even announced the MintChip digital currency project and run an employee trial in 2014. It seems that banks might start using new technologies in this direction too.

Manie Eagar said:

“From monitoring emerging trends two scenarios are quite likely – central banks will issue their own digital currencies pegged to their fiat for trading and exchange purposes; while in a hybrid model, co-exist with complementary currencies whose value could be pegged to the currency of a certain jurisdiction or allowed to ‘float’ in the free market as bitcoin does, for example.”

Emerging technologies can change the financial industry

Digital currency gives an alternative vision to the future development of the financial sector. The fact that some banking institution are moving to explore, analyze and adopt some of this cutting-edge opportunities shows the major impact that this technology brings to the world.

“Financial regulators and compliance efforts will focus on the bridging capabilities of these new technologies across platforms, jurisdictions, commercial and social applications,” continued Manie Eagar.

Paul Szczesny, co-founder of Bitcoiniacs stated:

“It is encouraging to see the BoC grappling with important issues surrounding innovation, Bitcoin, and blockchain technology. These technologies are fueling a revitalization in the financial industry and present enormous opportunities for the Canadian and worldwide economy. The deputy governor is correct regarding the potential of these innovations to decentralize monetary control and reduce the influence of central banks. My hope is that the BoC takes its innovative corporate culture seriously and is open to new paradigms for financial regulation. We need to consider that non-centralized alternatives to financial regulation are not only possible, but have the potential to create a more equitable, inclusive, and transparent financial system than has ever been considered before.”

According to Anthony Di Iorio:

“Although the blockchain undoubtedly presents new challenges, it also presents phenomenal opportunities – for example, the development of a financial system that manages and distributes risk more effectively, and that gives firms greater access to liquidity via channels such as P2P lending. The attitude of the Bank of Canada indicates that we have an exciting opportunity position ourselves as the leader in this field, and the big challenge we face is to create the regulatory environment to ensure that this happens.”

Manie Eagar concluded:

“Some experts believe that it is possible to organize an entirely new structure of money, banking, and finance; one that is interest-free, decentralized and controlled not by banks or central governments, but by individuals and businesses that associate and organize themselves into moneyless trading networks.”

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]]>Ban On Crypto Whitepaper: A Menace To Blockchain Technology?http://virtualmining.com/ban-on-crypto-whitepaper-a-menace-to-blockchain-technology/
Fri, 20 Nov 2015 16:30:24 +0000http://virtualmining.com/ban-on-crypto-whitepaper-a-menace-to-blockchain-technology/Read more »]]>On November 18th 2015, the Manhattan District Attorney Offices published a new white paper that proposes (well hidden in the text) a general ban on encryption on smartphones as a necessary step towards a better public safety. CoinTelegraph conducted a survey of experts to find out, what would be the implications for Blockchain technology, if this legislative project become reality.

Cyrus Vance, of the Manhattan DA Office, is the author of this white paper that could threaten the existence of blockchain technology. The paper begins saying that:

“Last fall, a decision by a single company changed the way those of us in law enforcement work to keep the public safe and bring justice to victims and their families. In September 2014, Apple Inc. announced that its new operating system for smartphones and tablets would employ, by default, what is commonly referred to as “full-disk encryption,” making data on its devices completely inaccessible without a passcode. Shortly thereafter, Google Inc. announced that it would do the same.

Apple’s and Google’s decisions to enable full-disk encryption by default on smartphones means that law enforcement officials can no longer access evidence of crimes stored on smartphones, even though the officials have a search warrant issued by a neutral judge.”

The obvious solution to the problem, according to Mr. Vance, is to regress back to an ante-cryptography world:

“The federal legislation would provide in substance that any smartphone manufactured, leased, or sold in the U.S. must be able to be unlocked, or its data accessed, by the operating system designer. Compliance with such a statute would not require new technology or costly adjustments.”

Sure, it wouldn’t require new technology or costly adjustments, it would just trash years of research and work to implement them in the software.

Open Source: Existing Bypass?

“This is a great example of why Open Source software is so important. They can’t come and ask SatoshiLabs to implement a backdoor to our Trezor firmware as they could do with proprietary software producers.

By the way: blockchain technology does not use encryption, but signatures. And there’s no discussion about banning signatures (yet). They would have to ban online banking or Netflix too.”

Android, the most widespread smartphone operating system on the planet, is Open Source.

This means that even if law would enforce a ban on cryptography to Google, its developer, the OS could still be available for anybody to fork it and add an extension to it.

The end result would see people using the “official” software and being under control, while criminals would use “enhanced” versions of the software.

Governments Can Slow Down Technological Progress

But Can’t Stop It

Asked what would this law bring to the world of software and users, Susanne Tarkowski Tempelhof, CEO of Bitnation answered:

“They can make it harder to use, through attempting to block apps like WhatsApp and Telegram, etc.

They can’t prevent people who want to use encryption from using it, but they can make mass adoption more slow and difficult.

It’s revolting, but sadly expected, that governments use horrible tragedies like the Paris attack to further strip away people of civil liberties. It’s particularly perverted considering the Paris attackers didn’t even use any encryption at all… but apparently facts are not of essence in the anti-terror rhetoric.

Governments do not understand that the methods they use to prevent attacks from one threat, will inevitably lead to the end of their own existence.”

If this paper would become law, and all phones in the US become compliant, wouldn’t it be as easy as buying a foreign smartphone, for criminals to bypass it?

Would the customs have to check all the incoming phones for compliancy?

Or even easier, wouldn’t you install the “alternative” operating system, or install some cryptographic utility?

The question is open: does this white paper offer a technically feasible and useful scenario, or is it going to end up as just another tool of control over the common citizen, only affecting criminals in a very small measure?

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